Razer tones down 17-inch Blade Pro and shaves $1,700 off the starting price

The Blade Pro is about to be more affordable with a GeForce GTX 1060 GPU option.

Can you spot any differences between the two Razer Blade Pro laptops in the image above? One of them is equipped with a 4K resolution display powered by a GeForce GTX 1080, and the other is a new configuration option that pairs a Full HD 1080p panel with a GeForce GTX 1060 GPU with 6GB of GDDR5 memory.

By offering a lower end configuration, Razer is able to slash the cost of entry nearly in half to $2,300 (£2,400), down from $4,000. That is still comparatively pricey to other laptops in the market with a GeForce GTX 1060 underneath the hood. Nevertheless, it opens the Razer Blade Pro up to a wider audience.

The 17.3-inch matte display on this new configuration is an IPS panel with a 120Hz refresh rate, versus the IGZO display that is used on the higher end SKU. There is no mention of G-Sync support like there is with the $4,000 setup. That said, a GeForce GTX 1060 6GB is a capable GPU for gaming at 1080p, though a GeForce GTX 1070 might have been a better fit considering the panel's high refresh rate.

Razer considers the Blade Pro a desktop replacement. Compute grunt work is handled by a Core i7-7700HQ processor (4C/8T) clocked at 2.8GHz to 3.8GHz. it also comes standard with 16GB (8GBx2) of DDR4-2400 RAM (expandable to 32GB) and a 250GB M.2 NVMe SSD paired up with a 2TB HDD.

The size of the new Blade Pro is the same as before (22.5mm x 424mm x 281mm), though interestingly Razer somehow managed to reduce the weight from 3.49kg to 3.07kg.